1 Peter Chapter 1

Peter praises God for new birth into a living hope, explains why faith is tested, and calls redeemed exiles to holiness and fervent love.

1 Peter 1:1-2

Greeting to God’s Chosen Exiles

1 Peter 1:3-9

A Living Hope Amid Trials

1 Peter 1:10-12

What Prophets Sought and Angels Watch

1 Peter 1:13-21

Holy Children Redeemed at a Great Price

1 Peter 1:22-25

Love Born of the Enduring Word

1 Peter 1:1

The letter opens with a name that is itself a testimony. Simon, the fisherman from Bethsaida, writes under the name Jesus gave him, the Greek Petros, “stone.” The disciple who once tried to talk his Master out of the cross and who later denied Him in the high priest’s courtyard now writes as a restored servant. He claims no rank above the other apostles. “An apostle of Jesus Christ” means one sent with a message and bearing the authority of the One who sent him. The weight of what follows rests on Christ’s commission rather than on Peter’s personal prominence.

The readers are “strangers scattered.” Two Greek terms carry this address. Parepidēmoi describes people residing for a time in a place that is not their home. Diaspora was the word Greek-speaking Jews used for the covenant people dispersed among the nations after the exile. Peter applies both to congregations that were largely Gentile in origin (2:10; 4:3-4). Faith in Christ had made them aliens in their own towns. Their neighbors had not moved; their loyalties had. They now belonged to a homeland still ahead of them, and the festivals, customs, and moral assumptions of their surroundings no longer held the final claim on their lives.

The five regions named—Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia—cover most of the land north of the Taurus Mountains in what is now Turkey. Jews from several of these provinces heard Peter preach at Pentecost (Acts 2:9), and Paul was once prevented by the Spirit from entering Bithynia (Acts 16:7). The gospel had nevertheless taken root there, and the letter was evidently meant to travel from congregation to congregation across a wide territory.

The address already holds the shape of the whole letter. These believers are chosen by God and estranged from the world at once, and the two facts belong together. Christians who feel out of place in their culture need not conclude that something has gone wrong. Peter treats that tension as the normal condition of those whose citizenship is in heaven and who wait for the earth God will make new.

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Word / Phrase Notes

παρεπιδήμοις (parepidēmois) — strangers

The word describes a sojourner, someone living temporarily among a people not his own. Abraham used the related idea when he called himself a stranger among the Hittites. Peter applies it to believers whose permanent home is the inheritance God is keeping, so that their present residence, however long, is provisional.

1 Peter 2:11

διασπορᾶς (diasporas) — scattered

Literally “of the dispersion,” the term had long named Jewish communities living outside the land of promise. Peter extends it to the whole church in Asia Minor, presenting Gentile and Jewish believers alike as God’s covenant people living among the nations until He gathers them.